Review 1
Purchased!
Good idea for the game but the game is about 20% finished now. There are a lot
of different resources but only few of them have specialized machinery, the rest
are just copy-paste. Balance is non-existent, some things don't make sense. Why
positive review then? Because I enjoyed playing it for 5 hours until it became
obvious that it is not finished yet. So if you want to try it for few hours
without expecting a full game, I recommend it.
I am not sure if it will be ever finished as their other game - Mining Copper
was released two weeks before this one and also has reviews that say it is
unfinished (I didn't play it myself) and instead of finishing one game dev
released another.
So what is this game about? There are three parts in it: mining, making and
exploration.
Mining:
You have several resources and each one has a machinery chain which basically
starts from drilling holes, transforming them into tunnels, digging resources,
transporting them, processing them into final product (either green/blue energy
or just some resource which you store to use in other chains). Each stage in
chain produces next resource and can also produce gold. You use gold to upgrade
speed and yield of each stage. Some chains don't make sense, for example, you
load impure coal into truck making truckload of coal, then unload truckload of
coal into more impure coal at warehouse basically making impure coal out of
nothing.
Making:
You use green energy to create 5 types of units. Each unit has rank and level.
You produce rank 1 units. You can upgrade their level with gold and you can
combine two of the same rank into one of the higher rank of the same type. So to
create rank 9 unit you need to make 256 rank 1 units. After rank 9 it requires 4
units of the previous rank to make another, so 1024 rank 1 for rank 10, 4096 for
rank 11, etc. After you upgrade a unit to a new level with cash you need to
craft enough units to at least get it to the same rank before you can use it,
luckily if you combine few units, one of which has higher level resulting level
will be the highest of them.
Exploration:
You choose 3 unit types and the first unit of those types (usually the strongest
unless you reordered them) goes into battle. Each level initially has 10
enemies, one of which is the boss (which increases by 20 each 5 levels).
Rightmost unit attacks the enemy, then central unit attacks the enemy, leftmost
unit attacks the enemy, and then finally enemy attacks your rightmost unit, so
use tanky unit at the rightmost position. If enemy level is higher than your
total level of three units then enemy attacks first otherwise you can just kill
them before they get a move if your units are strong enough. You get sources of
resources as a reward for exploration which are used to produce initial resource
in Mining production chains. The further you get the more rare resource sources
you find but because there is nothing special about those resources it is still
better to just produce initial resources to convert them to green energy and
gold. Yes you get more chains but because they cost more to upgrade they end up
slower so increase is not very noticable.
And so that's it. Mine resources, produce green energy and gold, spend gold on
upgrades, spend energy on crafting new units, combine units, fight.
Review 2
Purchased!
EDIT2: Another very similar game by the same dev is out there, same kind of
thing, same price, same reskin. Avoid this dev.
EDIT: I had to change this not NOT recommended.
Why? Not the game, although my thoughts have not changed, and about 4 hours is
about all the "playing" there is.
It is because the dev has a very similar game, also at a cost that, is in the
same state. If they had one game and were working on it? Sure, pay to get it.
But this seems like a copy/paste cash grab, which is super sad, since the bones
are there..
EDIT2: The devs response did not shine any light on why they released 2 games
that are 20% complete, at the same time. My recommendation stays the same. Are
you committed to making a good game, or making 2 games that are not really
finished and make 2x as much cash? Pretty clear which the devs chose.
This is super beta material. The instructions (in English at least) are not that
helpful and only 1 page saying not a lot.
Lots of stuff is not obvious, like only one of the "team" fights at once.
There is no scroll bar on the left, so it is VERY possible you will not notice
there are more things to build (looking at you, Uranium!)
I would say I am half way through, and it has got to the point of my income
being well high enough to just get each element, spam the buildings, get the
next and repeat. Some balancing required.
There is very little in the way of decisions to make. Just make all the things
until you need something (has happened twice in 4 hours...), go swap something
over and you are done.
So why am I recommending it? Has good bones, I have enjoyed the 4 hours I have
into it, and will probably "finish" it in another 4 or so. Tomorrow. :D
